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<title>To Reform by Lady of Prompts (Aethelflaed)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24703759">To Reform</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelflaed/pseuds/Lady%20of%20Prompts'>Lady of Prompts (Aethelflaed)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Backstory, Body Horror, Crowley's Fall (Good Omens), Fallen Angels, Gen, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Loss of Identity, Or lack-of-Body Horror, Pre-Canon, Short, War in Heaven (Good Omens), not graphic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 10:06:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>491</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24703759</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelflaed/pseuds/Lady%20of%20Prompts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Silence, tumbling down the void, falling, Falling, forever downward.</p><p>The heat of his descent burned against him, through him, eating at him as nothing ever had, as the stars he’d held in his palm never had.</p><p>It shredded him.<br/>--<br/>An angel Falls, and loses himself, piece by piece.</p><p>Short fic about Falling for Verb Roulette on the GO-Events server</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Verb Roulette</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>To Reform</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Verb roulette - I received the prompt of a single verb (To Reform), which I could write into a story of any length.</p><p>The end result is a bit angsty - shocking I know! I wouldn't call the ending "Happy" or "Downer" but don't expect to be cheered up by the final lines.</p><p>I tagged this as body horror because Crowley's loss of identity is reflected in his body, and it's a bit horrifying, but not at all graphic.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Falling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One moment twenty thousand angels faced off against each other, voices raising </span>
  <em>
    <span>(higher and higher – a new kind of music filled with emotions never felt before)</span>
  </em>
  <span> until nothing could be heard, just a continuous scream of sound, no way to distinguish the questions from the accusations from the blasphemies </span>
  <em>
    <span>(more new things, too many new things) –</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>And then…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Silence, tumbling down the void, falling, Falling, forever downward.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The heat of his descent burned against him, through him, eating at him as nothing ever had, as the stars he’d held in his palm never had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It </span>
  <em>
    <span>shredded </span>
  </em>
  <span>him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He spun through the nothing, glimpsed the feathers trailing behind, ripped away, swirling away, vanishing, forgotten; then more, his hair tearing free, his robes fraying and unraveling, pulling apart in the force of his passage, his skin cracking and blistering, black and red patterns crisscrossing and growing until nothing else remained.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then he simply shattered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not violently, not an explosion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His body, his essence, everything that was him turned to ash and smoke and broke apart, flaking away, dissipating – more dust in the cosmos, less than that, nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No body, no form, no soul, no name.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He couldn’t say what part of him remained to hit the boiling sulfur, but whatever it was, it still felt pain.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>(Too many new things, make it stop, bring back one familiar thing)</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Screaming – thrashing – drowning – sinking – rising again, pushed up by the incalculable heat – to break the surface and begin again. He didn’t know how long he remained there, choking, struggling, failing. Dying. How many times? How many cycles?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Without a body, how could he pull free?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Some of the others managed it. He didn’t know how. They didn’t share their secrets; anything that helped you survive might help an enemy, and they were all enemies.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>(Secrets – enemies – this was his life now, nothing else – the old was gone forever)</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He pictured in his mind something new – a body, one that could survive in a world that no longer made sense. Long and straight – no hair or wings or pieces to be torn off. Flexible, able to twist and coil and escape anything. Strong, endless muscle, coiled tight, ready to fight or to flee.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Black and red, like the blisters and burns that were the last he’d ever seen of his body.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then…his new form simply existed. He lashed his tail and slid through the sulfur, gliding towards the edge. It hurt still – the armour of scales was no match for the punishment he’d been given – but his arrow-shaped head cut through, until it struck something solid, and he struggled ashore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His long black body coiled, piling in on himself, hiding in his own shadow, trembling for the loss of everything, everything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he couldn’t stay here. Others would come. Enemies would come.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he pushed his new body, side to side, across the rough ground. Scraping. Slithering.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Crawling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shattered, but whole again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Reformed.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading!</p><p>This is the first of the events I've signed up for this summer (not the first signed up, the first to post) so look forward to more soon.</p><p>Thanks to several beta readers on the Do It With Style Discord server (ArcticRose, ilikestopwatches, and elf_on_the_shelf) who helped me get the angst balanced. Had a bit of a mental block on this one, but I think the end result turned out good.</p><p>If you enjoyed, please leave a comment below! &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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